Ray Romano On How Surgery Fixed His Blocked Artery

Ray Romano is one lucky guy and he’ll be the first to say it. In a recent episode of WTF with Marc Maron podcast, the star talked about his recent surgery and how it saved his life.

Ray Romano Says Diagnosis Was Like A Wake-up Call To His Heart Disease

Appearing on an episode of WTF with Marc Maron podcast, the “Everybody Loves Raymond” alum talked about how an early discovery of a condition prevented him from having a widowmaker heart attack when 90% of the main artery in his heart was blocked.

“I had to have a stent put in, at 90% blockage,” the star, 65, told host Maron when they were chatting about health issues. “I got kinda lucky that we found it before having a heart attack.”

He went on to note that he had struggled with his cholesterol for twenty years, adding that his doctor advised him to take medication for it.

“Every time, I said, ‘Let me do it myself.’ And I would go home, and I would eat right. Not vegan, but a little healthier, and get it down a couple ticks,” Romano explained.

He later confessed that his unclean diet and lifestyle eventually contributed to the artery blockage. “Now because I’m on the meds, my cholesterol dropped right away,” Romano said.

“If I could go back 20 years, I would have gone on the meds,” he added, before sharing that he’s now pre-diabetic. “It was hard for me to sustain that diet stuff.”

The health scare had another effect on him as it forced him to recognize his advanced age, which he admitted was something he often struggled to come to terms with.

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“Man, saying 50 was weird, but saying 60… it sounds foreign, it sounds fake, you know?” he said. “I know in my head I don’t feel that old. In my body, I’m getting a couple of notices that I am that old.”

In A Chat With Entertainment Tonight Earlier This Month, The Star Revealed That He Saw A Cardiologist After Experiencing Chest Pains

“I called my agent at one in the morning because I couldn’t sleep. I go, ‘I can’t do it, can’t do this,'” Romano said. “Because — I’m not joking — I had to go to my cardiologist in New York and get on the treadmill and do a stress test because I was getting chest pains.”

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